Northern Ireland coast, looking at the White Rocks
The end of 2023 finds me in the same place, an apartment in Bethlehem, PA, at the same job, LVPG Hellertown. It was a good year overall, with far more rewards than frustrations. I am rapidly approaching my 60th birthday at the end of January. I have reflected in prior letters like this about my accomplishments, but approaching 60 makes me reflect more on my good fortunes at the moment, especially after seeing several of my closest friends go through rough times with their health in 2023.
The job: I am now the lead physician at the office (by default) and have gotten two huge raises and an equally huge bonus, so I am making way more money than I thought I would, which makes the relative lack of vacation time and the preponderance of tedious computer work hurt a bit less.
Health/Exercise:
Swimming in Santorini
There have been some amazingly good developments late in this year after a somewhat moribund first 8 months. First, I decided I should lose some weight. My body fat analysis suggested some had crept onto me despite being a vegetarian and exercising regularly and looking pretty good. I stopped eating dessert every night and only had sweets occasionally. I have lost 14 pounds so far and cannot believe how much better I feel: my clothes are no longer tight, my legs feel loose and aren’t sore all the time, and I have a lot more energy. Second, I also started on Green Tea Extract on the advice of Moravian’s president, and that also seems to have decreased my soreness and enhanced my recovery. I almost never wake up tired and stiff, even if I have done a lot the day before and felt tired in the evening. It has not been easy – the sweets shelf and snacks at the office call to me all day, but I can resist and am not sure I want to go back. I think if I can get below 170lbs (I am close), I will try eating some again and see if it makes me feel the way I did.
Otherwise, I had covid for the first time in February, but it was very mild and I bounced back strong, finishing 2nd in my age group in a Bermuda 10k only a month after testing positive. I also finished 2nd in my age group at the Parkway Classic 10 miler in Alexandria in April, but I was disappointed with my time. My running was coming around then when I started a series of 7 calf strains all through the summer, leading up to the weight gain and the beginning of the latest news. Unlike other times I’ve lost weight (usually to stress) and gotten weaker, I am getting noticeably stronger. I am walking more during the week and trying to do more hiking, and I am enjoying it. I am in remarkable shape for someone my age, and it is a huge plus in my life I do not take for granted.
I had LASIK in 1999, and it was successful and allowed me to travel without worries about contacts, but I have never seen well. I found out I have astigmatism in 2015, and since then I have spent thousands of dollars on various glasses to try to fix it and let me see the golf ball better, but nothing has done the trick. Until this year. I got prisms put in my newest pair and see great. My eyes and brain have been working hard for 24 years to help me see, and I would get double vision when I was tired. This fixes it and makes driving much safer, especially at night.
Travel:
As always, the highlights of the year. The first big trip was in early March to Bermuda to see the Wakelys. We had a great time, though it was too windy and the seas too rough for water sports. In April I flew to Charlotte and rented a car to take me to the Asheville, NC area for the first time. The Spells bought a beautiful house in the hills northwest of town along the French Broad River. I did trail runs and visited various artsy spots in the area. In May I rewarded my nieces, Carlie Mills and Cecelia Hough, with a dream trip to Greece: two days in Athens (I LOVED the Acropolis) and 4 days in Santorini, a lovely and photogenic place. In June, another big trip, this time to Northern Ireland to visit my friends from my Swiss trip, Ethel and David Walker. Their generosity was stupendous, and it is such a lovely and charming area. I stayed with Michael and Grace Chilombo near Dublin on arrival and departure. In early September I made my first non-winter trip to Colorado and loved it. Andrew, Christina and Ruby were great hosts as I went to the lesser known but spectacular Black Canyon of the Gunnison in the west and did other hikes around Colorado Springs. The final big trip in Mid-November was a road trip back to Asheville via D.C. and Roanoke. I had a great time at every stop, with Linh Nguyen, the Wrights, and the Spells, with a highpoint Greg’s 60th birthday on the way back. So many great runs and hikes (Grandfather Mountain is ROUGH!!), especially when I came across a mama bear with three cubs at the NC Arboretum while running, avoiding any confrontation.
I did a three day weekend at our cottage on Keuka Lake and made a few trips into NYC, staying in a hotel one time for the first time there after crashing with Greg Miller every other time (THANKS!). I saw Al and Kathleen Hartmann (and danced at the silent disco at Lincoln Center) before seeing Aby and Shoba and part of their family in Rye, NY. I also saw Bonnie and Rob for the first time in a long time at their amazing log home in Delaware
https://youtu.be/u9C-tfnD020?si=cW3Vz4BV1pKN7kGP Colorado video
https://youtu.be/8qpTfU7aMMw?si=iN2bCeniPX1gPFsw Ireland video
https://youtu.be/qm9mVfjTQMM?si=t5z1olX0OIyV_Il9 Greece video
The Word for 2024 and beyond is “ENOUGH”: Most of us have ENOUGH. We don’t need more, and the earth cannot support us continually getting more. Even if we get rid of things to make space for more, those things usually go to waste or take up lots of space. The propaganda of more is strong, and the people who encourage more than ENOUGH need to stop. Second, ENOUGH fussing about other people’s lives. Why does it concern you who loves whom, what books they read, and how they live their lives (as long as they respect others’ rights and laws as well)?
Books/Reading: One of my great disappointments was the New Yorker no longer allowing access via Kindle as of September. It is the best information available. The Atlantic upped its game and is also excellent, but I have lost access to it as well. I have not adapted well to trying to read the New Yorker or the Atlantic on my phone or laptop.
I still am not reading as many books as I used to. The best read by far was the enchanting and supremely creative Nights of Plague by Orhan Parmuk. Bill Janovitz, one of my alternate rock heroes, wrote a comprehensive bio of the rock and roll keyboard player, Leon Russell: The Master of Space and Time’s Journey Through Rock and Roll History. I have nearly finished The Climate Book by Greta Thunberg. I was briefly on Audible and listened to the excellent Doppleganger: A Trip into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein, a brilliant explainer and writer. I was somewhat disappointed by the audio of Foolish by Sarah Cooper, a comedienne I admired. If you don’t know her, you will find it very funny, but I have been a fan for years, and it was a lot of the same material.
Both Canada and the US released new evaluations of the old data on alcohol, and they found research suggesting it was healthy to have one drink a day was flawed. The healthiest amount of alcohol a day is ZERO. Alcohol is an addictive poison, remember, and it is easy for one drink to become three, then five. It is much better to learn to relax without drugs and alcohol, so you can enjoy and remember things better. It only makes for fake fun and fake relaxing.
Climate change gets attention, but not enough, and not about the right things. To paraphrase one of the articles, for example: the single most impactful thing each human can do for the environment is STOP EATING BEEF. It is an extremely destructive and resource-wasting way to get protein, and it is also not that healthy and terrible for the people who process and mass produce it.
Me: “If everyone lived like me, there would be no climate change, no spiraling health care costs, no water shortages, no luxury goods industry, no alcohol or drug sales, no meat packing industry, and little inequality. There would not be much of an economy except for things that mattered, but more people would be better off than currently.”
At my job performance review: “I am pretty sure once I am retired, I will not be looking back fondly recalling my percentage of depression screens done.”
From the Atlantic, in an article on Muslims in the UK: “But the old lessons of empire were not lost on the newcomers, a few of whom brought to England the same thing that England had once brought them: contemptuous disregard of the religion, customs, habits, traditions, and shared beliefs of the native population. And that’s how you get Sharia councils in modern England.”
Me: “When do dimples become jowls?”
From the New Yorker, author not saved: “I remain convinced that an authentically color-blind society – one that recognizes histories of differences but refuses to fetishize or reproduce them-is the destination we must aim for. Either we achieve genuine universalism or we destroy ourselves as a consequence of our mutual resentment and suspicion.”
the New Yorker: “Why do one in eight Americans, and one out of six children, live in poverty – a rate about the same as it was in 1970? The short answer, Desmond argues, is that as a society we have made a priority of other things: maximal wealth accumulation for the few and cheap stuff for the many.”
Adam Gopnik, one of my favorites, in the New Yorker: “And the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, is, perhaps, unique on the planet inasmuch as it is, as the scholar Jacob L. Wright suggests in his new book, Why the Bible Began, so entirely a losers’ tale. The Jews were the great sufferers of the ancient world – persecuted, exiled, catastrophically defeated – and yet the tale of their special selection, and of the demiurge who, from and unbeliever’s point of view, reneged on every promise and failed them at every turn, is the most admired, influential, and permanent of all written texts.”
The Climate Book: “For decades now, science has outlined the repercussions of favoring hedonism over stewardship. Cut through the rhetorical façade of concern, and we have been well aware what the climate impacts of frequent flying, buying SUVs, owning second homes, travelling further and faster and consuming more stuff year on year would be. But the people paying the price for our norms of ever-increasing consumption are not us, they are the poorer, more climate-vulnerable communities elsewhere..”
John Kenneth Galbraith has a lot of good quotes, but here is one even more pertinent today than when he said it long ago: ”The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy: that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”
Places I jumped or dove into cold water:
1. The Antarctic Peninsula
Arctic Polar Plunge
2. Inside the Arctic Circle on Svalbard (With and without dry suit)
3. Milford Sound, New Zealand
4. Doubtful Sound, New Zealand
5. Keuka Lake
6. Iceland
7. Camp Lavigne
8. Halfway Dam
9. Wanaka, New Zealand (In wetsuit)
Modern hot buttons:
1. Cancel Culture: anyone who thinks cancel culture is a new concept has little understanding of human history. Conformity has dominated human existence, and only in the last 40-50 years has it lost any of its power. That is a GREAT thing. The only people this upsets now are the people who rely on conformity to keep their power and influence, and those who treat people with disregard or worse. If you think getting cancelled now is bad, may I remind you of lynching, burning at the stake, and being drawn and quartered?
2. Woke: WOKE has become an alarm call for anyone wanting to frighten others who don’t have much insight or empathy for the human condition. Many people go through life shouldering others out of the way and steamrolling people without caring much who it impacts as long as they get their way. Wokeness in its non-pejorative sense means simply paying attention to the well-being of others and making an effort not to offend them or harm them as little as possible, especially those humans who have traditionally had a hard time and have been traumatized. It is neighborliness, consideration and empathy, the kind of thing that is so foreign to those who embrace ideologies like MAGA, the foundations of which are selfishness, victimhood and fear.
3. Motives for mass shootings: Right after a mass shooting in our country, the media searches furiously for a motive. Was it a hate crime? Were they racist, homophobic, Nazis, disgruntled, etc.? IT DOESN’T MATTER. What matters is they were all violently mentally ill and still allowed to obtain and deploy massive firepower designed specifically to kill many people quickly. It would be helpful to ratchet down hateful rhetoric which can spur these troubled people on, but more important to markedly reduce the ability they have to access the weapons and ammo.
Best one day adventures I have had:
1. Via Ferrata, Kicking Horse Mountain Resort, near Golden, BC (Greg and Kathy Wright)
2. Kayaking across fjord and back to climb the highest mountain in that region, Longyearbyen, Svalbard
3. Bungy jump/Sky swing, Nevis, Queenstown, New Zealand (Greg Wright)
4. Canyoning, Wanaka, New Zealand (Greg Wright
5. Kayaking, Antarctic Peninsula on a perfect day
6. Kayaking, Doubtful Sound in a heavy rain (Waterfalls!!!), New Zealand
7. Kayaking, Milford Sound, New Zealand (Greg Wright)
8. Kayaking, Doubtful Sound, perfect weather (Greg Wright)
9. Game walk, Hluhluwe National Park, South Africa, where we ran from Black Rhinos
10. Game Walk, Kruger Park, charged by lioness (Kathy Wright)
Honorable mention: all my close encounters with elephants while driving in Swaziland, South Africa(Chris O’Rourke), and Zambia – only lasted a few minutes
Music:
The highlight again was Musikfest, where I got to see the super-talented Matt Nakoa and his other band, the Britpack (I am in a few of their videos, in the front row), and “discovered” Dirty Dollhouse. I went almost every day this year. The only other live music event was La Boheme at the Metropolitan Opera.
***The head and shoulders masterpieces of the year was Boygenius “The Record” and “the rest” Phoebe Bridgers can do no wrong and elevates them into the stratosphere. Song of the year “Not Strong Enough”
*I read a biography of Leon Russell and listened to almost all his music from the 70s, which has such a great groove. “Leon Live” is a good example.
*The Black Crowes “Shake Your Moneymaker (live)” has such a great sound, but it is almost ruined by Chris Robinson’s near parody of a parody of his vocals.
*The prolific Van Wagner “Hungry” and “Government Man” continues to delight and provoke thought with his songs.
*Daniel Johns “FutureNever” is a remarkable piece of creativity that doesn’t always entertain but is always interesting. Is he a musical genius? Maybe.
*Son Volt “Day of the Doug” is a very accessible and melodic step back to no frills rock
*Matt Nakoa “Antique Dances” is an outstanding collection of classical piano songs he composed and plays. He is so good at everything.
*GROUPLOVE “I Want It All Right Now” leaves no doubt about their longevity and creativity. So fun.
*Dirty Dollhouse “Vinyl Child” and “Queen Coyote” has a heavenly, powerful voice and writes songs that wrap you all up in feelings. One to watch, and she is from Philly!
*First Aid Kit “Palomino Deluxe” is a very nice album by these Swedish sisters who love American music.
*Alisa Xayalith “Superpowers” is a collection of empowering pop songs by the singer of the Naked and Famous.
***Noah Gunderson “If This Is the End” creates only compelling and emotional songs. This is one to listen to over and over.
*Todd Snider “Live: The Return of the Storyteller” celebrates the one-of-a-kind singer/songwriter/raconteur as he plays songs and talks about his career. Very funny.
*Soul Asylum “The Complete Unplugged” great versions of their songs and some forgettable covers. From their high-water mark. I was to see them live the day I tested positive for Covid 19.
*Johnny Polonsky “Rise of the Rebel Angels” has my 2nd favorite song of the year, “Everywhere All the Time,” a power pop gem, and the rest is very listenable from this aging prodigy.
*The Goo Goo Dolls “Live at the Academy, NY 1995” fun collection of them live just as they were hitting it big.
*Juliana Hatfield “Juliana Hatfield Sings ELO” is an entertaining sample of some of their best with her girly voice.
***Trashcan Sinatras “Cake”, one of the greatest albums ever, was rereleased this year. The endlessly clever lyrics, shimmering guitars and peerless vocals still top anything else, and it entered the UK charts at #10 33 years after its first release.
*The Joy Formidable released a few singles and a double album of their live show in London with the Wolf Orchestra.
Lots of excitement planned for next year. My birthday should be fantastic (I will be out of the country barring catastrophe). Hope your 2024 is as good as mine is looking!
Contact: 305 Prospect Ave., Unit 411
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Terry O’Rourke